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More than a third of Brits say that mothers of young kids should stay at home rather than going to work, a new study reveals.

Despite 72% of people saying that they disagree that it’s ‘a man’s job to be the breadwinner and a woman’s role to stay at home’, 33% of us still believe women should be shouldering the majority of the parenting early on.

The findings have been published in The British Social Attitudes Survey which is carried out every year by the National Centre for Social Research, and looks at attitudes towards politics, gender, work, climate and welfare.

Age and education seem to be driving factors in attitudes towards working mums, with almost half of those aged over 75 saying that mums should stay at home, compared to 30% of 18 to 34-year-olds.

Those who had no formal qualifications are also twice as likely as graduates to say they should give up going out to work.

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That’s despite a growing effort by the government to provide more childcare help and access to shared parental leave. And it’s also interesting, given the number of famous working mums who openly share about the benefits and struggles of juggling careers and domestic lives.

Serena Williams, for example, has this week spoken openly about the challenges of being a working mum.

The study has also been investigating our attitudes towards sexism in other areas of life – the results of which seem to be pretty confused. It may not come as much of a surprise to learn that when it comes to blatant sexism, we’re less likely to take male victims seriously.

93% of Brits say that sexist bullying towards women online is wrong…yet only 85% said the same about the sexist bullying of men, while 57% of participants said it was always or usually wrong to tell a woman in the street that she ‘looks gorgeous’.

And aside from sexism, we’re still big believers in the welfare state (which is reassuring, given the growing gap between this country’s richest and poorest communities).

Over half of people believe that cutting welfare benefits would damage too many people’s lives, with 20% saying the government should spend more on helping people out. 70% think that the low wages of single parents should be topped up by the government and the majority of people also want the minimum wage to be increased.

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‘The people of Britain are moving away from the idea that men should be breadwinners and women homemakers,’ says Nancy Kelley, the deputy chief executive of NatCen.

‘Yet when we asked people if they thought mothers of pre-school age children should work, we found no increase in support in recent years, against a backdrop of several policy changes aiming to help working families manage work and childcare.

‘People are supportive of parental leave being shared between men and women but, in practice, very few actually do.’

With that in mind, she says, the government might be better off looking beyond the law if they ever hope to balance child-rearing duties between mums and dads.